Shooting Pool (Billiards) in Vegas

Hey all, I'm getting ready to head to the APA National Tournament (which is an amateur pool league with around 250,000 members) in Vegas, and I'm looking for advice on how to take some shots around the table. The environment is a large conference hall with around 500 tables, each with its own table light. Flash is not permitted (and is likely to get you ejected for your safety because the players would kill you).

So my question is, are there some techniques I can use to get some decent shots? I've found in the past in some local pool halls that the lighting can be very, shall we say, delicate, particularly during the day if there's natural light squeezing in through the windows. This is a completely sealed hall, so no worries about that. In general I would expect to be able to get quite close to the action, particularly when my team is shooting.

The first thing I would do upon arrival is determine whether the table lights are tungsten or fluorescent. Checkout this thread for some tips on dealing with fluorescent lighting.

You will undoubtedly be dealing with a low light situation, which means fast lenses and high ISO will be required.

Dynamic range might be an issue, as well. The tabletops will be a lot brighter than the players around them. Metering might be a challenge. Chimp often and watch for "blinkies" on the LCD.

Great suggestions. I'm guessing that fluorescent lights will basically be the tubes, but what would tungsten lights look like? More like halogens where they are individual spot lights?

I can't provide much insight on this. I have taken only one picture at a pool table.

For the picture, I used an f-stop of 1.8 and had the iso up to the extended 3200.

this was the result:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Byte size: ZERO | PHOTOBUCKET ERROR IMAGE

I am pretty sure you will have a lot more provided light there because it is a big event, and there will be other cameras rolling...

Yes. Your basic incandescent bulbs. Halogens are also a type of tungsten light though they can look much different. If you're not sure, take a shot with tungsten white balance and another with fluorescent white balance, and see which has more accurate color on your LCD.